Laramie
by wren4
Summary: 18 years in the future and Vaughn and Sydney are divorced...but Fate isn't done with them yet. When an old enemy kidnaps their daughter, they have to remember what brought them together in the first place or lose what they love most. S/V! *Complete*
1. Hell

Title: Laramie  
  
Author: wren  
  
Rating: PG-13   
  
Disclaimer: Obviously none of it's mine...  
  
Summary: 18 years in the future, SD-6 is gone, and an emotionally unstable Vaughn and embittered Sydney are divorced...but Fate's not done with them yet. When an old enemy kidnaps their teenage daughter, they have to remember what brought them together in the first place, or lose what they love most.  
  
A/N: I know you've seen this idea before, so thank you for having enough interest to come this far. I hope it'll at least be entertaining for you!  
  
Please Read and Review!!!  
  
  
  
Chapter One---Hell  
  
Michael Vaughn picked the picture up off his desk, the last personal object left in his office to place in his sadly small cardboard box. He brushed his fingers across the barrier of glass, wishing he could touch the actual person, tracing the lines of her face with his fingernail. The first thing that always hit him when he saw this photo was how radiant she looked, holding their newborn baby; she was exhausted after nearly 26 hours of labor, but she absolutely glowed with pride and love that made her the most beautiful woman he would ever see. She had given him the most perfect gift ever that year: a little girl named Laramie, partly perfect because she resembled the woman he loved to the point she was almost an exact replica, and partly because she was his.  
  
He placed the frame face down on top of his pile of possessions with a customary twinge of sorrow, and turned to survey the empty room. All the shelves were bare, the desk was cleared of all his pens and papers and calendars, only the furniture was left. He dropped despondently into his beaten leather chair and pushed back, swinging his feet up so they were on top the desk, ankles crossed, like some private eye in an old movie; he had always wanted to do that, and now that it no longer belonged to him, he finally felt he could. He took in the deserted look of his workplace and his pitifully undersized pile of belongings, and decided that it wasn't completely empty after all.  
  
No, the memories still clung to this place, cluttered ghosts that hung over every space she had touched, all changed irrevocably simply by her presence. There, in that chair, she had sat in her angry red wig and argued about his instinct. That led him inevitably to all those hours in the warehouse with her, where they inhabited their own gray world set separate from the rest, where anything could have happened--and it did. All the secret meetings, the times she'd cried on his shoulder, whispered her secrets, every precious smile, every treasured laugh, and every covetous glance.  
  
Then came the evening they raided SD-6, so fresh in his mind, he could still see her across the room from him in her heavy black clothes, separated by wires and debris. She had looked at him with so much pain, a pleading glance for understanding, and at that moment there had been no Agent Vaughn or Agent Bristow, only Michael and Sydney, a man and a woman just like Irina had told him. No rules, no protocol, only air between them and that hadn't been enough to keep them apart. Their lips had molded together in their first kiss, and they could have been the only two people in the world, the only two people who appreciated the true meaning of love. That had been far from the end of their trials, but they made it work somehow because they knew today was the best day of their lives, since tomorrow might never dawn.   
  
They had been married almost two years later when she had finally given up espionage; he had proposed on the pier where he had met her the night her father stood her up for dinner, where he had told her she could always call him. She said yes without any hesitation.  
  
Over there in the corner, that was the phone he had answered when she had called him to tell him she was pregnant, the same one that had rung to inform him she was at the hospital delivering their child.  
  
Laramie meant 'tears of love' in French, and they'd certainly had enough of those. Five years, he'd had five years to think about it, and he still couldn't understand why she had left. He just knew that one dawn he had rolled over to kiss her good morning and her part of the bed had been cold, the sheets smooth with no impression of her left, not even her lingering smell. The actual fight that they had separated over was stupid in his opinion; he had mentioned a project he was involved in at work, at which she had informed him that it was far too dangerous. He'd reminded her of how dangerous her job had been, and she'd mentioned how his father had never come home and she was worried that the same thing would happen again, and he'd dropped in a comment about her mother. The thing about married couples is that after so long together they learn everything there is to know about the other, know what buttons to push, know the exact spots to touch that will wound each other the most. So, she'd packed up her stuff and Laramie that night while he was sleeping and gotten as far away as she could from him, eleven years of good marriage and it was suddenly gone.  
  
Sometimes, when he went to her house to visit his daughter, he wished he could just ask her what he had done wrong, fall on his knees in front of her and beg her forgiveness for all his faults and flaws, but he had too much damn pride.  
  
But that didn't mean he didn't miss her, because he did, with every breath.  
  
A polite noise at the door sliced through his reflections, and he swiveled the chair to face the entrance to his office. Eric Weiss had one hand propped on the doorframe, watching him. Weiss knew him too well, and it worried him that the other man might have caught the direction of his thoughts.  
  
Weiss ambled into the room, turning in a circle to survey the whole thing. "Look's like you've packed up everything...You know I'm really sorry to see you go, Mike..."  
  
"Yeah, you've told me that before. I'm gonna miss you too." And he would, Weiss had been his best friend, his best man at his wedding, and his solace when it had crumbled out from underneath him.  
  
"You sure you don't want to go out drinking with me one last time, you know-for old time's sake?" He smiled broadly with invitation; it was really Weiss who got the benefit of their late night indulgences since Michael attracted the attention of more women than he got on his own. The only thing Michael got out of it was a couple of hours of forgetfulness, but it was all still there waiting for him when he woke up the next day.   
  
"Nah, Eric, I've got to start driving this afternoon if I want to make it there before tomorrow night." All of his possessions that he was taking with him where already neatly packed in his car, ready to leave when he finished in here. He didn't have any furniture to take with him because he didn't have an apartment to move it into; he planned to stay in a hotel until he could find one.   
  
"Speaking of making it there...have you told her yet?" There was no need to specify whom he was talking about. Any other woman they referred to by her name, but Weiss knew it was unhealthy for both of them to mention his ex-wife's.  
  
"No, I haven't gotten around to yet." He felt guilty about that fact, but he found when picked up the phone to call her his fingers shook too much to dial the numbers   
  
"Haven't gotten around to it? Mike, you're moving into her town, this is the kind of information she needs to know!"  
  
"Hey, I didn't ask to be transferred! I even pleaded to be moved somewhere else, anywhere else, but they didn't listen to me...It's not like I want to move in there and interrupt her life!" He had done a lot more than just plead, but they were obdurate that he would fill this position.   
  
"Don't lie to me, I know you want to, you haven't gotten over her! Didn't I tell you the first time you walked in here with that look on your face that this woman was more trouble than she was worth, that she'd be the ruin of a good man? And here it is, the man on the street corner with the sign is right, the end is near!" His head drooped to rest against his chest as Weiss's reproaches went on, no one would ever understand what he felt about 'that woman.' Weiss's voice softened a little as he noticed his friend's appearance. "Don't look like that...C'mon, I know you, and you can pull this together. You march right in her door, tell her you're gonna be living in that town whether she likes or not, and you give her hell!"  
  
"Yeah, give her hell..." he laughed, unnerved by the whole idea. He'd never seen anyone give Sydney hell, never once seen her come out of anything more than mildly upset and little ruffled. No one gave her hell, ever, so how could he be the first?  
  
"That's it!" Weiss congratulated him, mistaking his remark. He shook his hand and said his goodbyes, promising to be in touch.  
  
He watched Weiss's receding back, thinking he was right on at least one point: hell. They were sending him straight into hell.  
  
With a groan of protesting muscles, he propelled himself out of his seat, and bent to grab up his box. Settling it against his hip, he walked outside of the office one last time, fumbling in his pocket for his keys. He turned around and locked the door on a part of his life he was going to miss; but he couldn't lock the memories, the ghosts, inside with the rest, they would always follow him in a tragic procession wherever he went. 


	2. The Long Day

Chapter Two---The Long Day  
  
It had been a long day.   
  
Sydney flung open the passenger-side door with unnecessary force and flopped down into the seat sideways, feet hovering centimeters above the pavement, watching the traffic on the highway pass her by. The slight wind created by the passing cars tugged her hair out in front of her face, and she shoved it viciously back behind her right ear.  
  
She'd woken up this morning cold and lonely, her hands sliding across the icy sheets, searching for something that wasn't there. But that was how she woke up every morning. When she'd first left him, she'd thought that feeling would disappear with enough distance and time. Now, five years later, she decided it was a feeling that she was going to have to live with; after sleeping next to someone warm and tender for so many years, you never could feel the same in a bed by yourself.  
  
Because it couldn't possibly mean she missed the man himself.  
  
People tell you to listen to your heart, it can't lead you astray. But it can, it can lie to you just like anything else. Her heart had told she had been in love, but she couldn't have been; Sydney didn't know how to love, she could kill and maim and deceive, but she couldn't love, not the way he needed.   
  
She kicked her shoes off, letting them fall to the ground, and brought her feet up onto the leather with the rest of her, hugging her knees to the ache in her chest.  
  
Then, Laramie's alarm hadn't gone off, so she'd gone through the intense process of dragging her daughter out of bed for school. She scrounged up a barely edible breakfast on short notice, and survived the nail-biting experience of letting Laramie drive to school, since she had recently acquired her permit.   
  
So what does a retired spy do for living? She taught English and Literature to seventh and eighth grade students. The class had been especially horrendous today, drawing on what she used to think of as her limitless patience. It had definite limits, she'd found. She had stayed late to work with one of her pupils, and Laramie had gotten a ride with a particularly questionable friend, so she had hurried to get home as soon as she could.  
  
And now her car had broken down.  
  
This would have never happened to the old Sydney Bristow. She would have lured someone to the side of the road, and stolen their car. Or she would have had a cell phone that worked. The first option wasn't open to her because she was now a law-abiding citizen, and she couldn't use the second either because her phone battery had run down. No, it wouldn't have happened to Sydney Bristow, but it sure as hell happened to Sydney Bristow-Vaughn.  
  
Sydney Bristow-Vaughn, it was too long, she still couldn't understand why she didn't give up his name. She told herself it was because you couldn't erase eleven years of your life by deleting a word; she used it to drag her mistake out in front of her eyes every day, every time she signed anything, so she couldn't forget. Forgetting was dangerous.  
  
A car up ahead slowed, pulling into the emergency lane, slowly backing up towards her. Her muscles tensed, and she had to mentally remind herself there was no danger, only someone kind enough to try to help her. She slipped her feet into her shoes, and pushed herself up into a standing position, wandering a couple steps forward to meet the person.   
  
The door opened, and he climbed out slowly with the motions of a much older man, his forehead already set in a mass of wrinkles that she used to find adorable, the orange of the fading sun giving him a slightly golden radiance. He buried his hands in his pockets so she couldn't see their nervous movements as he walked, unhurriedly since he felt his legs might collapse right underneath him; the very sight of her had unfortunate side effects on him. He'd been hoping to avoid this confrontation for two or three days, but he had no such luck.  
  
"Need help?" his voice didn't wobble; he almost sounded like his old self.  
  
"Michael," she replied impersonally; she didn't call him Vaughn anymore, that was too intimate, a term of affection. Her eyes grazed past his only long enough to catch a glimpse of green before settling on the scraggly vegetation clinging in the gravel next to his feet. But only a glimpse sent vibrations through her that she'd rather not admit to. "What are you doing here?" He started to answer her, but she cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Actually, I don't want to know."  
  
His eyes moved passed her to survey the condition of her vehicle. "I don't have any jumper cables, but I can offer you ride. I think I still remember where the place is...unless you've packed up and moved without telling me again." He was surprised, and maybe a little pleased, by his own vehemence. He remembered what Weiss had told him and straightened up a little, feeling more empowered. Give her hell, Mike.  
  
She ignored his comment, "Can you just tell me what time it is? Laramie's probably worried by now..."  
  
He removed his hand from his pocket, shoving up his sleeve, and looked at his watch, up at her, then back to his watch again. He tapped it with his finger, cursing quietly to himself. He finally gave up on it with a sigh, "I swear, the thing's never stopped before."  
  
"No, no, no!" she was suddenly furious, one hand pounding down on the hood of her car, forgetting not to look him in the eye. "You will not get me with that line again!"  
  
"What--?" he began, then stopped, all his new control and self-possession gone, ripped away. He remembered the day he told her about his father's watch, the look in her eyes as he had been speaking. It had been a treasured memory of his, her expression had told him that at least she had loved him at one time, but her tone now seemed to turn it all into meaningless trash. When had she become so heartless?   
  
"Don't flatter yourself," he growled, staring straight back at her. "I'm not so desperate as to try to get you back!" He turned his back on her, and stalked to his car. "You either want a ride, or you don't. Decide now, because I'm leaving."  
  
"Fine." Her stomped over to him without about as much dignity as three year old, dropping into his passenger seat with a stiff version of her usual grace. With his own parody of gentleman-like behavior, he slammed the door on her.  
  
He strode of over to the driver's side, sinking into the sun-warmed material, and closed the door. He hoped she didn't notice how much his hands were shaking as he shoved the car in gear, turning the wheel violently, pressing hard on the accelerator as he propelled them back onto the freeway. 


	3. Radio Wars

A/N: AHHHHHHH!!! Didn't you love last night's episode?! I was literally dancing during the commercial breaks! Plus Weiss is back from the dead, and he's been reincarnated as Cupid! I won't bore you with all the great moments, since you probably saw them, just thought I'd mention them for some reason...  
  
  
Chapter Three---Radio Wars  
  
Hoping to break the unbearable silence, he jabbed at the radio and music flooded through the car. He drummed his fingers on the wheel, singing some of lines he remembered to himself, finally diverting his attention from the woman next to him. It was hard to believe the songs he had grown up with were now considered "oldies", funny how times changed.   
  
Sydney suddenly jerked up from where she had been sitting, watching the landscape out the window, and hit the radio button, plunging them back into the agonizing quiet. "I can't stand love songs," was all she gave in way of explanation. If she was expecting an argument, he didn't give her one, merely glued his eyes back to the windshield and pressed his lips together in a thin line.   
  
Sydney had broken her self-imposed discipline with the movement, and she couldn't force her eyes back to the outside, found them drifting to her ex-husband. She had felt herself changing all these years, but she had not realized until that moment that he had too. His shape was subtly different than the one she had known so well, there was a little bit more to him, just a little thickened at the waist and a bit broader at the shoulders than he had been in his younger years. His hair was lighter too, just around the edges, where he'd let the first hints of gray creep in. She was fascinated by a new scar she found on the inside of his palm where one of his arms lay upturned on the armrest between them, it ran nearly from his wrist to the beginning of his ring finger, but when she discovered a faint itch in her fingers to explore its length, demand the story behind it, she buried her hands in the pleats of her skirt. She tried to count the trees and the cars they passed by, but her attention kept returning to little nuances about him that she had never noticed before.  
  
He caught her sideways glances at him, unsettling in their frequency and intensity. "What?" he snapped, nerves frayed.  
  
"Mmmm," she hummed the sound to cover her quick fumbling for a lie, "I was just wondering what all the boxes in the back seat were for."   
  
"I'm moving." His voice was clipped; he wanted to make her fight for the full answer because she suddenly no longer deserved his complete honesty.  
  
"Moving where?"   
  
"Here."  
  
"Here? As in...God, when where you planning on telling me this, Michael? Or did it just slip your mind?"   
  
"I got transferred. It wasn't my decision to make. End of story, I'm not going to bicker with you about this."  
  
"Okay, you got transferred, but when where you going to tell me? Were you just going to show up on our doorstep? Waltz in and mess up our lives without so much as a 'by your leave?'"  
  
"If I knew I was going to 'mess up' your life so damn much I would have never married you!"  
  
"Don't say that." Her voice, which had been escalating to full blown screaming, dropped unexpectedly into a small whisper. "Don't you ever say that. I don't care where we are now, Michael, but I will never regret marrying you. You gave me my daughter, and if for that reason only, I will never be sorry for our time together."  
  
The air buzzed with heavy, brutal tension and breathing became a grueling task. He was nearly shaking with relief when her house came into view; they both winced as the car rocked as they pulled up the driveway, finally finding an excuse to wrench their awareness away from each other. Their doors opened in a synchronized fashion, and they avoided any contact as they gathered their things and climbed out.  
  
"My purse," she murmured more to herself than anybody else as her hand felt around the carpet on the floor. "I must have locked my purse in my car. I'll have to go back for it tomorrow..." He gave a stiff nod, unsure any response was required of him, and she walked over to stoop in front of the side door, dragging out the spare key from its hiding place.  
  
He followed her inside as the door swung open, keeping a careful three paces between them. She really did have a beautiful house, more spacious than any teacher could really afford; the government would have given her anything she asked for after her years of service, barring actual recognition, but all she asked for was the this house. The wide marble foyer led in one direction to the kitchen and the dining room, or in the other to the family room and master bedroom. The stairs, also curling up from the foyer, conducted you to their daughter's room and the guest room. The door they entered through, though, opened right into the kitchen.  
  
"Mom?" A voice called from the depths of the house. "I've been trying to call you for over an hour! Oh, by the way," footsteps began making their way down the stairs, "Will called. He's going to be in town next week and wanted to know if you wanted to go out Saturday." His hand froze in the process of closing the door. Will Tippin. Would he spend his whole life being jealous of Will Tippin? "But I told him that we already had plans to--"  
  
His daughter appeared through the doorway, and she stopped when she saw him. He had once assumed that no one could rival Sydney, but Laramie was certainly coming close. She was taller than the last time he'd seen her, nearly her mother's height already, and by now seemed to be passed the awkward portion of her teenage years. She had her mother's hair and distinctive jaw line, but if you got close enough, you could see she had his eyes: green, flecked with brown so they could almost pass for hazel.  
  
"Dad! You're here! And it's not a holiday!" She glanced beside him, her brows drawing up like his sometimes did. "With Mom..."  
  
He held out his arms to her, and she hurried over to give him a hug. "Your mother and I were just discussing that actually...It seems that I've been reassigned here."  
  
"Really? You'll be living here?" She frowned for a moment, pulling back out of his arms to regard him. "You got rid of Stephanie before you moved, didn't you?"  
  
He ignored the glance Sydney shot him at the mention of the latest in his long string of girlfriends. "It's been almost two months since I last saw her, actually."  
  
"Good. I was getting worried, she lasted longer than any of the others."  
  
He laughed and pulled her back towards him. "You know none of them will ever match up to my standards; who could ever compare to you?"  
  
"Daddy!" she shrieked, the way she always did when he paid her a compliment.  
  
"I know, I know. I can't tell you how beautiful you are, but all those boys can..."  
  
"Daddy!" she repeated as he found her ticklish spot, and she writhed against him until she disentangled his fingers. When she caught her breath, she asked, "So where are you staying?"  
  
"Well," he began, more serious this time, "I was thinking I would stay in a hotel until I can find an apartment."  
  
"A hotel! You can't stay in a hotel!" She turned beseechingly to her mother. "Can't we lend him the guest room, Mom, just 'til he finds a place?"  
  
He caught the glare Sydney sent him over their daughter's head, but simply shrugged his shoulders; there wasn't anything he could do to change Laramie's mind. Stifling a sigh, she answered, "Yes, of course he can."  
  
He spent most the evening catching up with his daughter while Sydney cooked dinner. During the meal, Laramie tried so hard to get her parents to talk to each other, it nearly broke his heart. So, he put forth his best effort at civility, and Sydney seemed to notice he daughter's hard work too, even smiling and laughing at his jokes and stories like she used to. That fact only made it worse on him, since all he really wanted to do was grab her and shake some sense into her, convince her that it didn't matter if she loved him or not, just that she took him back.  
  
Long after the two of them went to sleep, he wandered the house, bathing in the artificial glow of the television, feeling like some sort of intruder. He finally made his way upstairs, but he never made it to the guest room, simply stood watching his daughter sleep.  
  
A board creaked, and he reached for a gun that wasn't there; it was in his trunk, he would never bring a gun anywhere near Laramie. But now he wished he had. He did as thorough a search of the house as he could manage, even thought about telling Sydney, but that would require approaching her bedroom, which he just couldn't do. Instead, he dismissed it as nothing, and settled down at last for a night of restless sleep. 


	4. Friends

A/N: Just wanted to say thanks for all the great reviews, you guys don't know how good they make me feel! :) Sorry this chapter is so awkward, I had trouble making it come out right, I hope it'll get better soon!   
  
  
Chapter Four---Friends  
  
He came down late that morning, dragging his sweatpants out from his suitcase, and completing a briefer version of his morning ritual, but when he got to the kitchen, only Sydney was there. She stood with her back to him for a long time before she turned around, her shoulders heaving up in a long breath, but it was still obvious by the red rings around her eyes that she had been crying. It pained him to avert his eyes, ignore her pain, but it was no longer his place to ask after the reason for her tears, much less give comfort.  
  
"Eggs?" she offered cheerily, shoving a plate at him. He caught it in one hand while the other accepted a fork. He brought a mouthful up, chewing it thoughtfully as he thought up something to say.  
  
"Laramie isn't up yet?"  
  
Sydney frowned at her own breakfast before dropping it untouched into the trash. "She hardly ever wakes up until after noon on the weekends."  
  
He smiled at bit to himself, dropping the forkful he had been about to eat back onto the platter, "I remember; last time she stayed at my apartment she didn't get up until past three, not even for food!"  
  
Something splintered in her eyes, and she let her plate fall into the sink with a resounding crash. "I better go check on her, anyway..." She made a hasty departure for the stairs, her bare feet gliding over the floor without a sound, not that she would have made any in shoes either.  
  
He consulted his eggs on what he'd said wrong, but they didn't have an answer so he set them dejectedly on the table.  
  
A desperate sound came from upstairs, not quite a scream, not quite a sob, but something close. He tore out the doorway, through the foyer, and up the staircase, immediately discovering that he wasn't as graceful as Sydney, his stocking feet sliding helplessly across the floor. He arrested his stride in front of his daughter's room, dragging air through his lungs in ragged gasps, wondering if he'd been too hasty since all seemed quiet.  
  
Then he looked inside. The curtains were torn down, all the drawers hauled out of her dresser and strewn across the carpet, the mattress flipped off the bed, and the covers kicked in a tumbled mess in one corner, clothes hanging from every feasible perch.   
  
The noise. The noise he'd heard last night must have been them, and he blamed himself for not going straight to Sydney, for leaving his daughter unprotected. He could have prevented this. If only he'd known...It was all his fault.  
  
And there was Sydney, bowed in the midst of the chaos, her hands clawing at her face as she tried to stop the floodgates that had opened, her body wracked with silent screams. "My baby," she repeated over and over to herself. "They got my baby...my baby..." He just couldn't begin to take it all in, comprehend the tangle in his mind; his Sydney, his strength, his courage, reduced to this weeping heap. And he had an urgent need to fix it, put her in order before he could let it all sink in, let himself break down.  
  
He crossed the room in two strides, picked her up as gently as he could, and set her on the bed frame, kneeling in front of her so his chin was level with her knees. "Syd, look at me...look at me..." She peeled her hands away from her eyes. "That's it, now we've got to be rational about this. Sydney, we're not going to get anything done to help her here crying. We've got to make a plan...We don't even know what the ransom is, what the reason behind this is for godssakes!" He found his own calm spinning away and paused a second to re-collect it. "You're so good at things like this Sydney, the very best, so you tell me...what's step one?"  
  
"Wait." Her voice was a shaking croak as she gazed down at him, her eyes glittering with the evidence of her devastation. "We wait. They'll be watching the house, they'll know that we've found..." Her newly gained composure cracked, and she shook her head briefly, spraying tears. "That we've found the room...They'll be calling soon."  
  
The phone rang in a mocking counter-tone to the eerie cadence of her voice, and she shot him a meaningful look. He rushed to the guest room to grab up the cordless there, bringing it back so they could both pick up the phone on the count of three.   
  
"Hello." He held his breath as Sydney answered their daughter's phone, making no sound so they wouldn't know there was more than one person listening. He was amazed by how much her condition had changed during their brief talk; she was almost steady, wiping her face dry with the hand that didn't cradle the receiver. Maybe Sydney would always amaze him.  
  
"Sydney." The distorted voice on the other end answered. "By now, you've discovered Laramie's absence. Truly sorry about that, but it seemed the only way to get you to agree to see me..." When Sydney didn't respond, the blackmailer must have been surprised, a little disappointment stealing into his tone. He must have had some speech prepared because he hesitated like he was fumbling for his place. "If I have my story right, you once left your heart in Taipei, and that's where you'll find it again."  
  
"How much money do you want?"  
  
"Money?" The garbled laughter nearly made him throw down the phone, nearly made him wretch. "Do you think so little of me, Sydney? I couldn't possible take your money! All I want is a favor, flitch a insignificant manuscript for me, and you and Laramie go home safely."  
  
"Tell me more about it."  
  
"Ah, ah, ah! That wouldn't be fair, would it? We have to play this game by my rules. Which means, you'll get the information you need, and no more, when you arrive in Taipei...I already have a room booked for you at the airport hotel. I'll be seeing you soon!" And the line went dead.  
  
Sydney directly hung up, too, and began dialing franticly at the numbers while he set down his own phone with a trembling hand. He considered her, unsure of whom she could be calling. "Hello? I need to talk to Jack Bristow." Oh. "No, this can't wait. Just tell him that it's Sydney. Yes, ma'am." There was a prolonged pause as she obviously waited for her father. "Dad? No, no it's not all right. Laramie's been kidnapped." He listened dumbly as she related the details to Jack, the despair that he had freed Sydney from descending in turn over him, feeling like this should be happening to someone else. "You can't? Why? I don't understand, but...Yes. No." Another pause as Jack elaborated on some point. "Sure, but...You want to what? Really? Okay..." She thrust the phone in his direction. "He wants to talk to you."  
  
He accepted the procured object, while a voice inside shouted, "Me?"   
  
"Yes, sir?" He was uncertain of what to call the man so he settled on a safe option; he had called him Mr. Bristow when they'd been forced to work together, he called him Jack when he had been his father-in-law, but now he was nothing.  
  
"I want you to understand something." Jack's voice was just as strong, just as commanding and imposing, as it had been in his middle years; Jack wasn't the type to fade away slowly with age. Michael still half-expected him to go out in a hale of gunfire. "We cannot--cannot--send in anyone to help you. Since they're monitoring you, a team would be too apparent, and they seem to be anticipating the manuscript to come from Sydney's hands...So it's up to just the two of you, and, Mr. Vaughn, I want my daughter and granddaughter back safe."  
  
"Not possibly more than I do, sir."  
  
"I'm inclined to argue with you, but I will believe you this time. Good luck." The line went dead in his hand again, and he walked over to replace dully.   
  
Sydney's hand on his arm stopped him when he turned to make his way back across the room. She tilted her head back to look up at him from her position still on the bed frame, her brown eyes sparkling with repressed emotion. She looked like he had once known her, young and burdened; but she wasn't so young anymore, and she was finally bending under the weight of those burdens. "Thank you. Thank you, for bringing me back to my self." He thought that was all and started to stagger away again, but her grip tightened to hold him in place. "We were friends once, weren't we, Vaughn?"  
  
His last name tumbled off her tongue so naturally it didn't register for a moment that she hadn't used it in years, and when it did, her couldn't help but answer, couldn't have been cynical or angry, even if the situation had called for it. "Of course, of course we were," he hurried to reassure her.  
  
It took her longer to form the next words, but finally the wall broke down, and she let them go. "Do you--do you think we could be friends again? Because I'm really going to need one now." 


	5. Clockwork

A/N: I took a break to get some of my inspiration back...Thanks for being patient. This chapter isn't that terrific either, but stick with me because I can promise the last few chapters of this fic will be great!  
  
  
Chapter Five---Clockwork  
  
"This is the place?" From where he stood on the sidewalk, Michael tipped his head back to look at the sign hanging over the small shop, reading it over again to make sure he understood: Clockwork, Watch Repair.   
  
The first thing they needed, Sydney had told him, was passports. "If we really do end up stealing this...this thing, Sydney and Vaughn can't have been anywhere near it," she had explained through the bathroom door as he dyed his hair. He had pulled the door open a few seconds later, while she had still been leaning on it, and for one breathless moment he thought she would fall into him. But she recovered her balance, stumbling back and fixing him with an odd look.  
  
She was laughing at him.   
  
He had tried not to be insulted; he was still remembering what it was like to be her friend, that sometimes she would laugh at him and not mean any affront by it, but it didn't soothe the sting. His forehead had wrinkled as he gazed back at her quizzically, "What? Did I do it wrong?"   
  
She had shaken her head, her newly-colored auburn hair swirling around her face and getting into her eyes; she pushed it back, biting the inside of her cheek to keep her amusement from spilling out, it wouldn't be right in a situation like this. "I always wondered what you'd look like as a blond."  
  
"So?" She made him uncomfortable, made him feel young, ridiculous, and insecure, all feelings she hadn't inspired for a long time.  
  
She had simply winkled her nose and smartly refrained from comment.  
  
Out on the street, he shifted his eyes to glance sideways at her, the rapid movement throwing his contacts out of position and momentarily blurring his vision as they settled back into place. Colored contacts, those had also been her idea. "Green eyes are much too obvious," she'd lectured him when she had bought them at the convenience store. Now, instead, he had pale blond hair and unremarkable brown eyes, nothing like the man he was used to seeing in the mirror in the morning.  
  
"This is the place," she reaffirmed, reaching for the door handle, the bell overhead shrieking out their entrance in boisterous tones.  
  
The man behind the counter looked up at them from the watch he was fiddling with as they stepped into the dim light of the repair shop, blinking as they adjusted from the agonizingly bright daylight outside, and instantly froze, looking like a deer caught in headlights. He was a small man of no more than fifty years, with a wiry build, olive skin and almond eyes hinting at his ethnic background, and thick glasses perched on the bridge of his nose that slid slowly down as his mouth gaped a bit. "Mrs. Vaughn," he enunciated the greeting too carefully, as if English wasn't his first language, a hint of suspicion and fear glittering in the depths of his eyes.  
  
She smiled at him, but there was an underlying glint of malice as she moved to drape herself over the glass counter, careless toying with a pocket watch that had been left out, leaning in close to his ear. "I need a favor."  
  
"Whatever the lady wants," he deferred with a mocking half-bow as he reached for a towel, wiping the grease off his hands, then tossing in back down with counterfeit security. The man's eyes flicked towards Michael, possibly searching for his agreement with his statement.  
  
She chuckled and the man visibly flinched, causing Michael to wonder what their history included. "Good, then we're in concord. Now, I was hoping you could make, say, two passports and two ID's, one of each for me and for him."  
  
"Pictures," he demanded, holding out a slender-fingered hand, and Sydney obliged, placing two sheets of small square photographs in his sweating palm that she had produced from her pocket. They had taken the pictures in a local arcade, in one of those booths you always find intermingled among the games, where friends and dates crowd in to take those silly pictures. He had walked in the smoky interior by her side and asked the same question of only a few minutes before, "This is the place?"  
  
"Of course not!" she had admonished him, explaining in simple terms, like those you would use with a child, that they needed pictures of how they currently looked for their passports, and these were almost the exact size needed.  
  
The man examined them briefly, giving a grunt of satisfaction. "It shouldn't take more than...maybe, forty-eight hours. You can come back for them then."  
  
"I need them by tomorrow," her voice was low, quiet and threatening, as she trailed a finger across glass display case, leaving a long, ugly smudge.  
  
"Tomorrow? This kind of artistry takes time, if you want it to come out right."  
  
"How has your wife been feeling lately?" She didn't look up to see his reaction at her thinly veiled warning, but she certainly got one as he bolted violently upward from his half-bent position, the ease in his eyes reverting back to pure terror.  
  
"They will be ready by ten o'clock tomorrow morning, at the latest."  
  
"How can I ever thank you?" she purred.  
  
"My pleasure, Mrs. Vaughn." Sarcasm dripped from his mouth, but she chose to ignore it, brushing it aside.  
  
She bestowed another one of those bone-chilling smiles on him and turned around to slip her arm through Michael's, leading him back out to his car. Once they were out of sight of the shop owner, though, she removed her hand, reacting like his touch was repulsive.  
  
She stood for a long moment staring into the sluggish traffic as she slowly reverted to the Sydney he knew, burying the frightening woman she had adopted for the purpose of obtaining their passports somewhere inside of herself, seeming to almost shrink in height, her face smoothing back into familiar lines. She pivoted then, catching his hand again as something bloomed in her brown eyes, giving it a passionate squeeze.  
  
"I'm going to be okay. We are going to be okay."  
  
And if in his heart he couldn't believe in her words, in her confidence, he didn't say a word. 


	6. Boom

Chapter Six---Boom  
  
The next step she taught him that night, while they waited impatiently for morning when they could finally leave for Taipei: packing. He had been tempted in his urgent state to simply throw a change of clothes in a duffel bag and be done with it, but luggage is just another part of a meticulously plotted disguise. Two of the best covers are as tourists and businesspeople, and the very best is to combine the two. So they packed their large suitcases full of junk they knew they would never need, suits and skirts, pressed shirts and cosmetics, sunglasses and disposable cameras, all the things normal people take on vacation.  
  
But since it wasn't a typical vacation, they needed more than just clothes.  
  
She showed him a compartment in the back of her linen closet, where you could just slip your fingernails under a board in the back and pull the panel out, revealing guns and gadgets, spy equipment that she wasn't allowed to have anymore. She demonstrated how to conceal them so no one would discover them, but he could only stare at her dumbfounded, mentally tallying up a list of all the materials in her house, all the thousands of dollars in one niche.  
  
"You keep guns in the house?" he began lamely, at last, when he had stood still for too long.  
  
"Yes?" she raised her voice, making the statement into a question, wondering what he had on his mind.  
  
"What if Laramie had found them?" It was the first scenario that came to mind, his daughter holding the gleaming black metal in one hand, a silencer in the other, horror in her eyes.  
  
"She wouldn't have. I'm smarter than that, you know I am." Her assurance didn't placate him, only made his useless worries worse, she should know there's no taking chances, anything can happen. His continued silence only earned him a look from where she was crouched down, searching through the pile of weapons. "Stop worrying; there's nothing you can do about it now."  
  
She uncovered what she was looking for and stood up, swinging around to face him directly, the gun held between them, pointed at his chest. She was seemingly surprised, her eyes widening as they moved between him and the firearm in her hand, some sort of realization dawning.  
  
And for the first he felt real fear, a sickening gnawing at the pit of his stomach as sweat broke out on his forehead. She could do it, right now, pull the trigger and be done with one problem at least.   
  
She needed him, a voice inside him argued, she needed him if she was ever going to get her daughter back. But that wasn't true, he knew, Sydney didn't need anyone, she had gone out of her way to prove that to him. So, his life was in the balance, relying on the fact that there was some remnant of feeling for him still buried inside her heart, that she could still possibly be the Sydney he once knew.  
  
"Boom," she breathed.  
  
She bent down and tucked the gun away in one of her boots, and reached for a tiny object resting next to her foot. Cautiously she approached him with it, holding it out for his inspection, hands spread in a gesture to show she wasn't armed, knowing his nerves were still on edge. Gently, careful to arch her body away from his, she leaned in to grip his collar, pinning the object underneath. Her hand brushed his chin as she backed away, like the touch of angel's wings, and his breath stopped again for a different reason. "What is that?" he asked tugging the neck of his shirt back into place, his finger tracing the outline of the small button next to his throat.   
  
"It will interrupt the signals on the metal detector, so you can make it through the airport," she explained as she slipped a pair of earrings through her lopes, palpably for the same purpose.  
  
"I don't remember you ever having anything like this before," he observed as he finally picked out his own handgun, hoping he was successfully masking the shaking inside him from the double shock of danger and her touch.  
  
"Marshall sends me...gifts...sometimes from the safe house where the CIA's been keeping him." She smiled fondly to herself. "Finding them is half the fun, since he always hides them in stuffed animal or something. He's says they're--they're a sort of thank you." Her voice broke, Marshall's forgiveness and understanding meant so much to her, a kind of redemption for a tired soul.  
  
She snatched her eyes away from him, burying the emotion there, looking instead to the crescent window at the end of the hallway, watching the first light of morning slip over the edge and spill down the floor. It was a new day, the day their adventure began. "Ready?"  
  
He took in his surroundings and found nothing missing; he'd been ready for a long time.   
  
"Ready."  
  
* * * * * * * * *   
  
He felt trapped, sitting on the airplane next to the window, Sydney in the middle seat next to him. The aisle seat was empty, but she still sat by his side since they were now once again a happy husband and wife, at least on the papers they carried. Her nearness terrified him, made him feel like he could spiral out of control at any second, lose himself in her.  
  
"Michael?" He focused his whole attention on her, her interruption a welcome respite from his thoughts, and she recoiled under the concentration of his gaze, nearly reconsidering speaking again. "Do you remember the first time we took Laramie on a plane?"  
  
"Yes." He grinned as he ran the memory over in his head again, all the sensations that were so commonplace then, that he would give anything for now. "She was so frightened of the noises the plane made, afraid of being up so high, she cried the whole time. By the time we got off, I could have sworn that every passenger on board was plotting our murder."  
  
"What were we thinking taking a two year old to Disney World? She couldn't have possibly understood what was going on."  
  
"I think that trip was more for us." They both broke off, looking away, recalling exactly what they had done on that vacation, and after a while he decided it was his turn to prompt the conversation. "What about that time we planned her a surprise birthday party?"  
  
"She was so upset; she actually believed we had forgotten! We had to bring out the cake and the balloons early just to get her to calm down."  
  
"Or the time you thought you lost her in the park..."  
  
"I was so terrified, I seriously didn't think we would ever find her again."  
  
"I wasn't worried; I trusted your spy instincts would find her."  
  
"But you were the one who found her."  
  
He was unreasonably pleased that she brought that point up, coming close to paying him an actual compliment. "I just tried to be logical about it; she wasn't on the playground, and she wasn't by the restrooms, so she had to be at the ice cream truck."  
  
Instead of continuing their reminiscing like he had expected, Sydney's smile suddenly dipped, her face falling into a bleak expression. "We'll get her back, won't we? We have to." And he witnessed something inside her break for the second time, the tears rolling softly down, not violent and desperate like before, but quiet and resigned.   
  
He pushed the armrest between them up, so he could slip an arm around her and pull her limp body close, their shoulders and thighs touching, her hair brushing his cheek. "I trusted you then, and I trust you now. I know we'll bring her home safely."  
  
He took her hand up in his, and they stayed like that, through all the layovers and delays, they held hands the whole way to Taipei. 


	7. 47

A/N: I was reading my reviews and I have to agree with Margot, I was looking back at my story a couple of days ago and I suddenly thought, my God, I've turned them into Jack and Irina! Or at least how they could be if Jack wasn't such an a** and admitted he still loves the woman! Okay, going on a tangent...Bad author! Must focus on Syd and Vaughn...  
  
  
Chapter Seven---47   
  
A room at the airport hotel had been reserved for them, just as they had been promised. That the reservations had been made under the name Bristow--not Vaughn--was a clue within itself that the blackmailer still thought of Sydney as Agent Bristow. It might not be much, but it was certainly something to keep in mind.  
  
Standing outside in the hallway, Michael gawked disbelievingly at the gold-painted number hanging on the door. "Forty-seven," he mumbled as Sydney fit the key into the lock. "Room number forty-seven. Whoever is doing this to us has one hell of a sense of humor."  
  
Sydney didn't make any comment herself, the room number only further supported her theory that this was trap, it couldn't possibly be anything else; she was just waiting for the bottom to drop out, because whenever she got comfortable in her environment, the bottom always, always dropped out. She let the door swing inward, taking in the state of the room with a tinge of distaste; the whole thing was done in neutral colors, earthy browns, duns, and subdued yellows, the carpet smelled like ashes, all the furniture was dilapidated with the evidence of previous occupants, and there was only one, sunken bed. There had been no pains taken to make sure they were comfortable, but all in all, she'd stayed in worse.  
  
Michael's attention moved first between the single bed and the couch, a moment of panic slicing through him. Someone was certainly set on torturing them. He made a decision and without a word he brushed past her and crossed the room, dropping his baggage on the sofa to claim it silently as his and surrender any entitlement to the bed. He thought he caught a shiver of relief pass over her, but if it was ever there, it was quickly suppressed.  
  
He reached into his bags to begin unpacking, but then frowned in the half-light of the room, made darker by the dull colors, and reached to pull back the filthy curtains on the window behind the couch. The setting sun filtered through, lighting his pale hair on fire in a golden halo, and he lingered with his hand still on the dirty fabric, watching the skyline and the busy hustle visible outside, calling to mind the last time he was in Taipei to see this view. "Brings back memories, doesn't it?" he said out loud before he could stop himself.  
  
Sydney froze where she stood, folding her clothes efficiently across the bed, as the image seized her: his face against the glass, his hands pressed to the barrier between them, alone in the darkness of the water so far away from her. She didn't know she could still feel those things, the fear, the pain, the heartbreak. But your heart can't break unless there's something to miss...   
  
Suddenly she couldn't breathe, she was suffocating, drowning in the middle of the room.  
  
The phone rang.  
  
She drew in a shaky lungful of air.  
  
They looked at each other; there was only one phone so they couldn't pull the same trick as last time. They both slowly approached the bedside table, the phone shrieking in an angry pitch at them, urging them to move faster than they felt like doing. Sydney reached to pick it up, and he leaned his face in close to hers to listen. "Hello?"  
  
"Sydney," the distorted voice greeted her. "So glad you made it safely. Now, to satisfy your curiosity...you'll find the manuscript at the National Palace Museum. It's not currently in rotation, so it is located in the third vault."  
  
"If you know so much about where it's located, why are you sending me to get it?"  
  
"Because I always liked to watch you do your job."  
  
"You like to..." she trailed off, clearly made ill at ease by that statement. "How do I know you really have my daughter?"  
  
"Can you afford to doubt me? But you'll find out for sure soon enough."   
  
Sydney set the phone down without waiting for the tone, already knowing he had hung up. "Get changed, Michael."  
  
Her face was only inches from his, and he had to step back away from the temptation of her lips, the curve of her neck; she always had this effect on him, even in the most perilous of times--maybe especially in those times--and he had to be in control of himself because he could feel the argument shimmering in the space between them. "We can't go for it now, Sydney."  
  
"We have to leave straight away, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner we get Laramie back."  
  
"It's long past five o'clock, the museum's been closed for hours, and it's getting dark."  
  
"Dark is the best time for these kind of things."  
  
"Not always. If we go now, we not only have to break into the vault, but the museum itself. Tomorrow, we can visit as tourists, it'll be easier that way." His momentum had started, building with every new contention. "Plus, I have to work on hacking into their system so we can cut the surveillance. I haven't done this in so long, it's going to take me hours...Neither of us have slept in nearly two days, either. We need more time to prepare." Her jaw hung slightly ajar, but she had nothing to say. "I want to get her back as much as you do, Syd, truly I do, but it's just not practical to leave now."  
  
His understanding took her by surprise; she could have handled condescending or prudent, but she hadn't been counting on his sympathy. She didn't have an answer for him, she hadn't been prepared for anything but a fight, so she picked up her toiletries and locked herself in the bathroom.   
  
With a sigh, he searched through his bags until he found his laptop, and borrowing a blanket from the bed, he set his mind to a long night of work. His concentration only strayed once when Sydney emerged from the shower, hair still dripping, wrapped from neck to ankle in the thickest pajamas that she could find, to pace across the room. She hurried under the covers and pulled them up to her chin, quickly snapping off the light, leaving him illuminated only by the artificial glow from the computer. When he finished almost two hours later, he closed the laptop and quietly set it on the floor next to him with consideration for the slumbering woman in the room, and arrayed his limbs on the too-short couch. But he couldn't sleep, couldn't calm his thoughts, not with her so near. He reminded himself multiple times that he needed to rest if he wanted to concentrate tomorrow, but the knowledge only made it more impossible, tossing and turning on the cramped surface, his senses stretched to the other side of the room. After a long time of lying awake, he realized the only way he was ever going to sleep was to give in.  
  
Stealthily, he crossed the distance and eased his weight beside her on the bed, stretching himself out along her length. The blankets had slipped down while she dozed to reveal the upper portion of her body, and he traced her curves in the dark with his eyes, but he was careful not to let himself touch her; he knew he had already crossed a line by being here with her, but somehow touching her when she wasn't aware, when she hadn't given him permission, seemed more criminal. He contented himself with listening to her even breathing, basking in the heat she displaced, until finally, without meaning to, he fell asleep in that familiar place at her side. 


	8. One of These Days

A/N: This chapter is totally messed up, I have no direction, but I need to take a break from this paper I'm writing...  
  
  
Chapter Eight---One of These Days  
  
He was only supposed to stay a few minutes, but he opened his eyes to find the morning sunlight slanting in tall towers across the russet carpet, edging closer to the bed. Even with the threat that she might wake any moment, he still couldn't find it within himself to move, those few minutes were supposed to indulge his desire, but he should have known better; the more he takes, the more he wants. It was only made more difficult by the fact she had snuggled close to him over the course of the night, her arms locked around his neck, the soft cushions of her lips pressed to the underside of his jaw, his own arm trapped underneath her body.  
  
But he couldn't stay; she'd break every bone in his body if she ever found out.  
  
So, he slowly detached himself from her embrace and gently tugged his arm inch by inch out from beneath her, stopping every few seconds to make sure she still rested peacefully. Levering himself into a sitting position, he dropped his feet to the ground with the heaviness of reluctance and stood up. He immediately turned back around to face her, though, leaning in close for one final caress, not knowing how long it will be before he's this close again.   
  
"One of these days, Syd," he promised as his fingers brushed tenderly down her cheek, "we're gonna get this love thing right."  
  
She stirred in her sleep, and he drew his hand back guiltily. What was he doing? He shouldn't be here, shouldn't have been here.  
  
His feet still stuck to the floor as he made his way across the room, like child resisting bedtime, but he made it back to the couch, pulling the blanket up to cover himself, trying to muffle the memory of her skin against his.   
  
* * * * * * * * *   
  
Sydney Bristow-Vaughn woke up warm for the first time in over five years, and she knew that feeling was wrong. What she was expecting wasn't there when she opened her eyes, though; it was presently on the sofa where it was supposed to be, back turned to her. She followed the hard, cold ridges of his spine, working over the odd emotion she was experiencing; it was almost like disappointment. But what could she have been expecting?  
  
This was definitely, definitely dangerous, she decided as she pushed herself out of bed for the long day ahead, if simply being in the same room with him had this kind of effect on her.  
  
She found a note waiting for her in the bathroom, taped to the mirror, the handwriting sprawling across the paper in unfamiliar scrawl. She reached a cautious hand for it, almost like she was expecting something to jump out at her. Her mind couldn't seem to fathom the possibilities this development presented as she scanned the lines, that the kidnapper could have actually stood in this room while they were unaware.  
  
"Sydney,  
"I almost forgot to tell you: the title of the manuscript is La Risposta.   
"Hope you slept well."  
  
She stared at her reflection looking back at her in the glass, and saw the same raw terror mirrored there that she felt growing inside her.  
  
* * * * * * * * *   
  
"Five minutes," he warned her, his attention locked on the laptop as she finally broke into the vault. There had been no trouble so far, they had passed perfectly as sightseers, and had only encountered two guards on the way here, both of which were now tied in a janitorial closet. But that didn't mean they were in the clear, far from it in fact.  
  
He heard Sydney's sharp intake of breath and sputtering curse and looked up, seeing what she had encountered. "It's impossible," she declared as she took in the rows and rows of metal shelves in the air-conditioned room, overflowing with precisely placed art and relics. "We'll never find it all of this."  
  
"It's got to be catalogued," he assured her, his brow furrowing as he looked back at the screen. "Four and half minutes until the cameras come back on, you need to start now."  
  
She scurried down the ranks, her mind quickly taking in the information and processing it until she discovered the section that housed the documents. The tips of her fingers brushed down the spines of the books, removing some on a whim, and then swiftly replacing them. "These are all in Mandarin, it can't be here."  
  
"Three and half minutes."  
  
"Ancient Chinese, I'm too far away."  
  
"Three."  
  
"No, no, no."  
  
"Two-twenty...one-fifty."  
  
"It has to be here!"  
  
"One-ten..." He drove his fingernails into his palms as his heart pumped adrenaline through his body, watching the clock run down, unable to do anything. "Forty-seven seconds, Syd!"  
  
"Almost..."  
  
"Twenty-five...We can't wait any longer. We have to get out!"  
  
"Western books; it has to be one of these!"  
  
"Fourteen!"  
  
"Found it!" She held it up for his inspection, red-backed and crumbling, the parchment bound together with leather strips, but he didn't see because he was watching the last of their time on the clock run out, the security cameras coming back on.  
  
"They've seen us," his voice was low, a quiet echo running across the room, bouncing around in the emptiness; he could almost hear the running feet now.   
  
She grabbed his arm, hauling him bodily after her, deeper into the room, and he looked on helplessly as the computer slipped from his grip, arching in the air, scattering its pieces as it hit the ground. "Leave it," she commanded as she saw his backward glance, his mind caught in images of his fingerprints on the keys.   
  
"Behind here." She shoved him in first, a tight squeeze between one of the metal shelves and the wall, his shoulders scraping painfully along the sides, and propelled herself after him. She landed against his chest, the book clutched between them the only barrier, and he braced his hands against her hips to keep them both from tumbling over. Their hearts beat frantically only a handbreadth apart, both immobile as they waited for what would happen next.   
  
He was so wrapped in the sensation of being close to Sydney, his irrational thoughts that he could die happy right now, that he didn't recognize the telltale signs that his breath wasn't the only one speeding up, didn't feel the one hand spreading long fingers experimentally across his ribs until her finger brushed bare flesh where his shirt had pulled up.  
  
And he knew, knew exactly what had turned Sydney into this bitter woman, knew what she had been hiding from him, from herself too.  
  
"You still need me," he accused, but the words still held some uncertainty because he couldn't believe what his senses were telling him; the sound was a quiet stone fall in room, he was still acutely aware of the threat outside this little world of theirs.  
  
"No." The protest was weak, discredited by the fact her hand was sliding farther under the hem of his shirt.   
  
"You still love me."   
  
Her hair lashed his face as she shook her head furiously in the constricted area; he'd struck a nerve. "I hate you," her breath hissed between her teeth, hot against his face.  
  
"You--" But he never got a chance to finish as her lips descended over his.   
  
  
  
* La Risposta, if I translated it right, means 'the truth' in Italian. 


	9. Hope

Chapter Nine---Hope  
  
He was so surprised there was no room for thought, only for reacting to her mouth on his, warm and full, just the way he remembered it, as it slowly burned through him. The kiss was hard and crushing, her teeth sinking into his bottom lip; nothing like the sweet innocence of their first kiss, but it still has the same bittersweet tang of longing, like the taste of teardrops and chocolate. He pulled back once to remind himself to be gentle, trailing kisses from one corner of her mouth to the other, his hand working through her hair in painful tugs, hers tangled in the fabric of his shirt. She reminded him of better times, and he felt whole, two pieces of the puzzle crashing--none too gently--together again.  
  
Abruptly she was gone, ripping away from him, taking the one stumbling step backward that the limited space allowed for, and she stood for a second looking up at him with a familiar emotion in her eyes, one that after all these years he still hadn't learned to read.   
  
"What did you do that for?" He used the only words he could still form, wanting only one answer.   
  
She leaned in close so her lips nearly touched his ear, so he could still feel the heat in them. "They're in the vault--didn't you hear them? I needed you to shut up."  
  
He lowered his voice to match hers, a sinking feeling beginning in the pit of his stomach, "Then why didn't you just put a hand over my mouth or give me a sign to be quiet?" Then why did you kiss me like that? But he doesn't speak the last part out loud.  
  
"Would you have stopped? You never did take a hint when you really wanted to say something."  
  
He didn't respond, knowing what she said to be the truth; he was always so determined to be heard that he sometimes ignored the warnings. Like the time he had wanted so urgently to explain himself after he had been sick, to explain Alice to her, but it hadn't been information she could handle at that moment. Would he ever learn?  
  
Inside him, something curled in on itself, shrinking in size, he thought its name was Hope, but he couldn't be sure anymore.  
  
She was respectful enough to give him a few minutes of time to think, and he outwardly turned his focus away from her, rubbing his hands against the sides of his pants as if he could rid himself of the texture of her. No matter what he promised her that morning, love's not as easy as they tell you, and there's no universal law that says when you love someone they have to love you back.  
  
Her mind was working too as he wrapped himself in apathy, her eyes slowly trailing down to the manuscript she still clasped in one hand. She was gentle as she opened the red cover, but there was a certain type of significance underlying her movements, drawing his eyes along with hers. There, the first page revealed a sign that was well known to both of them. "Rambaldi," she verbalized needlessly. "I thought that was over."  
  
"Obviously not." He heard the resentment in his own voice, but refused to wince, knowing it was only a cover for the pain eating away at him.   
  
She bit her lip over whatever she was going to say next and looked down. "The ventilation system," she interposed, her eyes still on her feet. "We can get out through the ventilation system." She grabbed his hand, but there was nothing intimate about the way she held his fingers in a firm grasp, leading him out into the open, slowly as she searched for the guards she knew were there.  
  
"Wait," he commanded, digging his heels in, bringing their painfully sluggish process to a standstill. "We have to go back for the computer."  
  
"We can't--"  
  
"My fingerprints are on it...they could trace it to us."  
  
"They won't--"  
  
"Sydney, just because for once you're not the one in trouble, doesn't mean we can ignore it."  
  
She turned on her heel, heading back to the door, dragging him along behind her as she weaved between the rows without a word. She pulled up when they could see the shattered parts on the floor just outside of the shadow of the shelf they were behind, and relinquished his hand in the equivalent of a shove in the right direction. She turned her back on him, arms crossed across her chest, feet apart, assuming a defensive stance as she scrutinized the interior of the vault. He collapsed to his knees, sliding them across the slick floor as his hands crawled along the surface, searching out the tiniest of the slivers, anything that could be used against them.  
  
The hand lowered on his shoulder in an overpowering hold before the chilly metal of the gun drove into his temple. One of the larger chunks he had just scooped up clattered to the floor almost soundlessly, but it was still enough to alert Sydney, swinging around with her weapon already drawn, eyes locking with the bulk above his left ear.  
  
"Drop it," a gruff voice ordered, and he begged Sydney silently not to listen. "Drop the gun, or he dies. Now."  
  
The gun plummeted straight down, where it lay at her feet, still within reach. Sydney could still pick it up and fire it in time.  
  
"Kick it over here." The barrel of the gun dug harder against his skull as his captor switched his grip on the trigger.  
  
The gun spun in dizzying circles towards him, shedding rainbows as the light refracted crazily off the polished exterior. Damn it, Sydney never gave in so easily.  
  
On some unseen signal, another man that he hadn't known was there, hunched into the corner of his vision to retrieve the gun, and two more appeared to take Sydney by the arms. Instinctively he fought against the restraint on him as their foul hands touched Sydney--his Sydney--but he only earned himself a disorienting blow to the head as he was hauled unceremoniously to his feet. The position of gun changed again, this time shoved into the small of his back where it was hidden from public view as they were marched through the vault door.  
  
"The manuscript?" the first man prompted, and the second rushed to pluck it from Sydney's limp hands, tucking it triumphantly away. "Good." He paused before they plunged back into the chaos of the museum, his eyes taking in the condition of their group. "We have been instructed by our employer to provide...transport...for the two of you. Now, we will have to walk through the crowd to get the parking lot, and I expect you to act normally--laughing, talking, so on--because if we are caught, you will be turned over to the guards."  
  
His captor took the first pace and the rest of them flowed around him, the man who had taken the manuscript beginning to spin some tale for the them, everyone laughing at the appropriate times, Sydney even smiling up at one of her retainers. They seemed to pass invisible among the people, the tourists too happily engaged and the employees too preoccupied to look their way, but in those moments when he did catch someone's eye time slowed down, hoping that they were discovered, praying that they weren't.   
  
There were three cars waiting for them, all dark and sleek with tinted windows that you could neither see in or out of, arranged in a semi-circle. Sydney and he were directed to the back seat of the longest one, the door shutting with the distinctive sound of a lock driving home. Sydney reacted by clawing at the cracks, testing a foot against the windows, but the glass was too thick to break. He stared straight ahead at the partition between the front and back seats as he felt the driver climb in, the engine starting up. She eventually fell back against the black leather, all her options exhausted, resting close to him, knee to knee, soul to soul.  
  
Her defeated gesture confirmed his fears: they were trapped. 


	10. Both Ways

A/N: Sappy, angsty, mushy, fluffy, shipperific chapter warning! How could we ever live without one? Hope you can stand all the gooeyness!   
  
  
Chapter Ten---Both Ways   
  
Their future was uncertain, just like it used to be everyday, life or death, today or never, and he had learned from those earlier times that there are some things that can't wait, some things that you need to say or you may never get the chance. He had regretted plenty in his existence, and he wasn't going to regret this quiet lull, wasn't going to lose this opportunity, but the words didn't come easily.  
  
"Sydney?" She turned her head his way in the dark light of the car, the slightest inclination to let him know he had her attention. "We-we don't know what's going to happen, right? I thought...in cause we don't have another chance...I need--want--to...Why do you hate me?"  
  
She sucked in a long breath that sounded almost like relief, and she angled herself toward him, twisting her upper body, pushing part way off the seat to be directly in front of his face, so he couldn't look anywhere but her, not that he would have. She looked ghostly and poignant as she trapped his gaze, her eyes black, unknowable pools in the dim light, half her face swathed in impenetrable shadows, a mystery about to reveal itself. She didn't hesitate as she began, and he thought that she must have had this conversation with herself before.   
  
"I used to know, Vaughn, I swear I did; I went through everyday with knowledge that I could live the rest of my life and never see you again..." She trailed off as a single tear spilled over, falling hot and wet on his knuckles, searing the back of his hand. "But one morning I woke up and I couldn't remember why. Then I had a new reason to hate you, because no matter what you did I could forgive you, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't stop loving you. And love is a weakness, something I can't afford to have..." She made a gesture with her hands to encompass not only their current surroundings, but also the past few days and all their events. "Look where love has got me now."  
  
She turned her head the slightest bit as if she were ashamed and her face caught in one of the faint shafts of sunlight that made its way occasionally through the tinted windows, revealing her features in a study of light and shadow, good and evil, winter and spring, life and death, and for the first time he truly saw.  
  
Everything has a price, even love. Especially love. Danny, Noah, and Will had all paid extravagant prices for the love of this woman, and so had he. But he had never before realized that she had paid too, for every one of them she had given up a little more of herself. And now there was nothing left to give. He would have to be the strong one, at least when it came to this, he would have to learn how to give enough for the both of them.  
  
He reached for her then, and she clung to him as he slowly drew her up onto his lap, laying her head on his shoulder, his lips against her hair. "When are you ever going to get it, Syd? It's love that gets us through."  
  
She placed her cool, slender hand over his heart, closing her eyes as she absorbed its rhythm. "Why do I need you so much?" she mused to herself, the sound reverberating were her chest rested against his side.  
  
She hadn't wanted an answer, but he gave her one anyway. "Because being with me means you'll always have a little danger in your life," he teased her gently, dropping a kiss on her crown to lighten the impact of his words. "And you don't know how to live any other way but dangerously." He grinned next to her ear, where she couldn't see, thinking how ridiculous he sounded; Michael Vaughn was practical and logical, far from dangerous. It was Sydney who encouraged him to do all those risky things, brought out the best and the worst in him, not the other way around. But then again, there had been all those situations she had gotten herself into for his sake during her years with the CIA. His smile slipped away. Maybe it did work both ways.  
  
She didn't find any humor at all in his comment, pulling back out of his arms so she could see his face. "But I did try, Vaughn, I tried so hard to get away from the danger. And the night I left--that night you came home and talked so much about that new project of yours--I couldn't take it anymore. I got scared and I ran--"  
  
"I wouldn't call it running..." He had the sudden need to protect her from her own harsh judgment.  
  
"But I did. I ran. I ran from my problems like I do every time. The thing was...you weren't there that time to catch me before I got too far away, and I got lost." Her voice dropped, taking on the frightening quality of loneliness. "Do you have any idea what it feels like? Being lost for five years..."  
  
He cradled her face in his hands, his thumbs moving down her cheekbones as he wished he could smooth out the lines there. "I do know, Syd. But we're here now, and...I love you."  
  
She started to say something, an air of expectancy hanging over them, but she stopped when they both felt the car roll to a halt. They were running out of time.  
  
She fought desperately with herself, the battle raging in her eyes, as the driver door opened and the footsteps rung on the ground, getting closer every moment she wavered.  
  
The door swung away, unforgiving daylight flooding across their intertwined figures, and Sydney won out over herself.  
  
'I love you,' she mouthed silently as the hands came in to pry them apart. 


	11. Prove It

Chapter Eleven---Prove It  
  
They had a whole new set of guards, six of them to be exact; the big, burly, intimidating type that you never know if they are really reliable in a fight or just depend on their size. But Michael decided that if the person who brought them there could afford so many hirelings to watch over the two of them, than he could certainly afford the best.  
  
So he didn't resist as he was escorted into the vacant looking warehouse, two men on his left and two on his right, keeping a specified distance between him and Sydney. He didn't even turn his head to catch a glimpse of her as they walked briskly, wary of another blow to his brow like before, and kept his footsteps even, ringing a bit with an air of assurance that he hoped was convincing, all the while wishing he could at least touch her hand, take a little comfort. He'd been trained to handle situations like this, but suddenly he wasn't ready.  
  
It wasn't a long march across the deserted concrete outside, with the lifeless gray sky above reflecting their moods, through the sliding metal door, and to the left into a smaller room, not nearly as echoing as the vast expanses of the main entrance, but still with a soaring ceiling that caught up every sound and threw it back at them. His guards stopped dead as they crossed the threshold, Sydney taking the hint from them as well, but he wandered a few steps farther than anyone else, his eyes riveting to the only presence that mattered at the moment: Laramie. She stood in the center of the room so you couldn't miss her, her arms hanging by her sides, her brown hair plastered to the sides of her face, her green eyes exposing a strange sort of calm; he took it first to mean she was in shock, but then he realized that not even the victims of the worst accidents look like that, and he'd seen quite a few. A tremor went through him, but there was no time to register fear, as a new threat demanded his attention.  
  
"I expected you earlier than this, Sydney." The voice drew his eyes along to the body beside his daughter, slender and tall with pale blond hair and frozen blue eyes, like artic skies.  
  
One of the men scurried forward, offering Rambaldi's manuscript to him with averted eyes, and Sark accepted it with a flourish, like a king might take something from a servant, secure in his domain. He ruffled the pages with a feigned interest before handing it back, and the hired gun hurried eagerly back to his place to the right of Sydney. Sustaining his regal air, Sark greedily took in their appearance, but if he was hoping for surprise or alarm, Sydney showed neither as she observed him as well, her only reaction was to quirk her lips into a slight frown before speaking. "You have your manuscript, now we'll take our daughter and go home. We had an agreement."   
  
Sark opened his mouth to answer her, but Laramie spoke first, taking one darting charge forward, "Mom--!" Sark latched onto her arm, and she didn't get far, his other hand coming down to lock the words in her throat as it closed over her jaw; the grip looked gentle enough, but it was evident to see the futile effort of her muscles against it.  
  
"Didn't anyone ever teach you children should be seen and not heard," he snarled close to her ear, his accent becoming more pronounced in his irritation.  
  
Michael lunged, he didn't think about the six--maybe seven--armed men in the room or what he was going to do, he was just moving, an instinctive reaction to his young being threatened. He managed to get halfway to the pair before they caught him, two of the men dragging him forcefully back to the wall, holding him motionless in a upright position as he dangled in their grip between them, every vulnerable inch of him spread and exposed like a man before a firing squad.   
  
Sark brushed his sleeve like Michael had physically touched him, releasing Laramie in the process, who stood still without another protest, not even the most negligible twitch to distinguish her from a statue. He turned on Sydney again then, picking up his words like nothing had happened, "We had no such agreement, if you remember back. I said that you had to steal the manuscript for me and Laramie could go home with you, but we agreed on nothing between those two points." He smirked at his own cleverness, "You're completely at my mercy."  
  
"What do you want with me?" Her chin came up a bit, daring him.  
  
"The CIA," he began with a friendly invitation, engaging her with an open motion to share her secrets, "they gave you some information after you left the organization, did they not? Something to do with a discovery about Rambaldi...?"  
  
There, that was it, he had thrown out his last card, revealed his intentions, and now it was Sydney's turn to play the situation as she chose. She dimpled at him, recognizing her own victory when she saw it. "You were always so sharp, Sark, bright and smart with so much ambition." She took a stride toward him, and when no one reached for her, she ventured another, farther and farther as she spoke until she came to stand in front of him. "But you never had direction; so good at taking orders, but not at acting on your own. So we'll exchange a little information for some information. Tell me, who are you working for now?"  
  
"Myself." His eyes narrowed, but he didn't call for anyone to remove her. "I work for myself now."  
  
Sydney grabbed onto that detail, twisting it to her own use. "That's why you needed me to get the manuscript, why you needed me here. You want a partner with...leadership qualities. You once thought that we were meant to work together; so what would you say if I took you up on that offer?" She looked neither to the left nor right, not even a glance at her daughter, any emotion at all and she would falter, giving him a break to fasten onto.  
  
"I'd say you were trying to trick me." He was matter-of-fact with his retort, but he sounded a bit tentative, as if he was still assessing her words.  
  
"I am being completely serious." Her face was static, no involuntary motion to give away the fact she was lying. Either she had perfected the practice, or she truly believed what she said.  
  
"And I'm supposed to trust you? I'm not that naive, Sydney. I know you." He laughed dryly, coming as close as he would get to a nervous twitter.  
  
"Fine. I'll prove it. Anything you want me to do." She had gambled, relinquishing control to Sark, leaving herself open, and a smile began edge its way across his face as he realized it.  
  
Warily, he used a finger to rotate her so she faced the wall where Michael was held unmoving, his gaze uncomprehending and questioning. Sark freed one hand to reach into a holster hidden under his jacket and produced a gun, reaching around her to place it in her hands, curling her fingers around it.   
  
"Kill him."  
  
The room held its collective breath as her hands closed of their own violation over the weapon, weighing it adeptly.   
  
The two guards restraining Michael inched away from the doomed man.  
  
She raised the gun and levered it straight at his chest, open eyelid dipping as she aimed.  
  
"I'm really going to miss you," she whispered, her low tone rolling like thunder in the quiet room, and she pulled the trigger.  
  
  
A/N: How's that for suspense? (Insert maniacal laughter here.) Remember the more reviews I get, the faster you find out what happens!  
  
On a more serious note, I edited the first chapter (though it's not showing up on fanfiction! grrr...)so it fits in with what happened on Sunday's awesome, wonderful, I-nearly-fainted-of-happiness show, and you can read it or not, your choice. 


	12. Second Bullet

A/N: Ha! My ploy worked! Caught your interest, didn't I? Well, I just want to say thanks to my frantic reviewers: chatnoir, Intel, ReeCee, Brynne, yumytaffy, lynn, Emma, Secret Agent Girl, donnatellaMarks, laurali, Mira, lurker, and all the rest of my faithful readers from chapters past! This is what you've all been waiting so anxiously for, sorry it's kind of short...  
  
  
Chapter Twelve---Second Bullet  
  
Sydney caught his gaze in that final millisecond before the bullet exploded into the air, and he wasn't afraid; he wasn't afraid of dying, and he had nothing to be afraid of in life now that she was back in his. Sydney would take care of him.  
  
"I'm really going to miss you."  
  
Instead of closing his eyes, he kept them open to witness his possible last moments in this world, and so he saw when her hand shook--shook deliberately so she could call it an accident if her plan failed. The air above his shoulder shattered as the bullet grazed his flesh, carving its mark through his shirt and skin, and burrowed into the side of guard beside him.  
  
In that one second of shocked inaction, when not even the wounded man beside him moved, Sydney fired off another round into the chest of the other hireling attached to him. Then that second of grace was over, and ammunition sliced through the place where she had been standing as she dropped to the ground, rolling and firing while she tried to keep a hairsbreadth ahead of her death. A surprised, unarmed Sark was caught through the knee by one of her shots, and when his legs crumpled out from under him, the second bullet smashed into his torso, throwing him back at an unnatural angle.  
  
Michael's reaction was to fall along with the two men beside him, casting off their cooling hands, and reaching across the tangled limbs of the closest one, finding sticky blood and the solid metal of a gun. He wrapped his fingers around it and pulled it free, using the momentum to throw him into the fray, but he wasn't looking to join the fight as he discharged a bullet into the nearest man, he was searching for his daughter. He crawled around a blond head he took to be Sark's and found her standing tall in the disarray, an easy target. He snaked out a hand to yank her ankle, throwing her off balance, his other arm coming around to shelter her back from the sudden tumble, stretching his body out as far as it would go to create a wall of protection over her. Their eyes locked, green against green, and an understanding passed between them before he lifted his head to glimpse the last guard escaping out the door. He recognized him as the man who still had the Rambaldi manuscript, and both he and Sydney raised their weapons at the same time, firing shots after his retreating form, but they hit empty air, ricocheting aimlessly. Too late.  
  
Slowly unfolding himself, he pulled himself and Laramie up into a sitting position, clutching her as close as he could get her to him. The tears were harder to let go than he thought, all his anger and frustration, all his fear and pain, all bursting out at one time, it rocked him to his core. He stroked her hair with one rough hand, and she brought her arms up to hold him back uncertainly, not knowing how to comfort her father. "Daddy," she whispered, "You're bleeding."  
  
"I know, baby, I know." The intervals between his sobs widening, he finally rose all the way to his feet, taking Laramie with him since he found himself incapable of letting her go again.  
  
Sydney tucked her gun away with an air of heavy fatigue, turning in a small circle as if she was trying to recover her sense of direction. She discovered what she was looking for and approached the figure sprawled on the ground with small, unsteady steps, going down on one knee a short distance away from Sark. Her hand trembled as she reached for his wrist to check his pulse, and she drew it back before it even touched him; it was obvious he was already dead, his destroyed chest would never draw another breath, and his glacial blue eyes, wide with disbelief, were already beginning to glaze over.   
  
"I really am going to miss you."  
  
She braced her hand on the floor and pushed herself up and away from him, searching out instead her daughter and Michael only a few feet away. Michael unwrapped his daughter from his grasp and opened his arms for Sydney, who didn't hesitate as she crashed into them.   
  
"He believed what he wanted to, didn't he?" Killing might come effortlessly to some, but that doesn't make the aftermath any easier to deal with.   
  
Unable to listen to the suffering in her words, he leaned down to stop them, brushing his lips across hers once, twice, three times, but no nearer, not with their daughter watching. She drew her mouth back so she could place one kiss on his collarbone, scarce inches from where her bullet had skimmed him earlier. "I'm so sorry."  
  
He cupped her cheek in his hand and drew her face down so it rested over his heart, "You did what you had to do." He put out his other hand blindly, connecting with Laramie's shirt, tugging her into their embrace.   
  
And they simply stood there, turning their eyes away from the wreckage and gore they stood in the midst of, just the three of them, like they should have been all along.  
  
"Mom, Dad...you have a lot of explaining to do."  
  
He laughed. 


	13. The Key

Chapter Thirteen---The Key  
  
  
Her fair face seemed to pale even more in comparison to the dark gray sweater it was nestled against, her thick eyelashes sweeping down to form shadowy crescents on her cheeks, her breath drawing in and out in a peaceful counter rhythm to his. He was awed by that one simple gesture of absolute trust, and he felt his soul singing in answer to hers, spilling out lullabies in a voice akin to the one his mother used to croon to him with. He stirred a hand to glide his fingertips gently down the side of Laramie's face, scooping a hair back into place, reverent hands moving like you might touch a dream you were afraid would break apart. But she was still whole, still there with him when he drew back.   
  
He was so careful not to wake her as he shifted them both farther back into his seat; she deserved her rest after the long day before.  
  
His job had been to clean the warehouse, sweep it for any object that could be traced to them--fingerprints, pieces of clothing--and set the scene to make it appear like a cult suicide; it was an easier course than disposing of all the bodies. To save Laramie from having to watch, Sydney had taken her outside and presumably taught her how to hotwire a car.   
  
That car they had driven straight to the American Embassy where he had used a phone to call the CIA. He had strained his patience as he was passed along a line of frantic, screechy underlings to the smooth, refined intonations of the senior officers before making his one request: he would not speak to anyone but Agent Weiss. Weiss had been complaining that he needed a promotion, and this sudden growth in his importance might just get him one. Michael had sat back in the hard-backed wooden chair he had collapsed into with a little hint of satisfaction at the ensuing flurry his appeal had created. He decided he liked being on this end of the negotiations, making the demands instead of meeting them.   
  
The only curious thing was that the CIA seemed to have not known of any of their actions of the last few days, which meant that Jack had purposely withheld the information from the organization. Jack was practiced at keeping secrets--and discerning who to keep them from--which led him to believe that there must have been someone or something in the CIA that Jack didn't trust.  
  
"Mike!" the voice on the other end had greeted him jovially. "We were starting to worry about you. I mean, you didn't show up for work, and Sydney's car abandoned by the side of the road...it didn't add up to anything good. I was starting to think I might have given you the wrong advice, and she had murdered you after all."  
  
Michael had smiled, a smile he was sure Weiss saw despite the miles between them. "I hope it didn't bother your conscience too much. But I can assure you she won't killing me anytime soon."  
  
"Really?" Weiss asked, his interest peaked, and Michael could envision him leaning earnestly forward over the top of his desk.  
  
"Weiss," Michael had sternly reprimanded him, "you do have a job to do here."  
  
"Right, right. But when you get home, we're having a serious heart-to-heart talk. Now, um, tell me exactly what happened..."  
  
Relating his tale and arranging for transport out of Taipei had taken far longer than he had expected and it had been full dark before the dragging trio had arrived at the airport hotel, but their day still hadn't been over yet. The three of them had piled into the small, sunken bed while outside the storm that had been threatening finally was released, running nosily down the window and drowning the city lights burning beyond the glass. With the rain beating in the background, Michael and Sydney twined their voices as they began their explanations; it was long story and never easy to understand, especially since Laramie had so many questions that they didn't have the answers to. One of her most in insistent questions was about her grandmother, but they could only tell her what Irina had been, not what she was, since she had escaped CIA custody over eight years before. She called, of course, from time to time on a secure line to check on her daughter and granddaughter, but Jack Bristow was the only one who knew where she was, a location which he planned on taking to the grave with him.  
  
Laramie took it all surprisingly well, a few tears and a few fits, but nothing earth shattering. And she didn't ask the pivotal question 'Why?' because she had already had her answer in the form of her last few days, the less she knew the safer she had been. He supposed, though, that he shouldn't have been so surprised by her composure, when he remembered the kind of women she had come from, women like Sydney and Irina. She would simply lay the details away, absorbing them into herself, until she could slowly piece them together for herself, bit by bit. Which left no doubt that this wasn't the last sleepless night they would spend over this topic.  
  
The rain had not ceased in the morning when they rose, yawning and blinking heavily under the burden of a few hours sleep; it had continued on all through the early hours, but they couldn't see it now from the private jet above the clouds.  
  
He lifted his eyes from Laramie to find Sydney observing him with a strange intensity, her head inclined somewhat to the side as she chewed something over. He had thought she was asleep too in the seat next to Laramie, but there wasn't the least trace of drowsiness about her, so he must have been wrong. "What are we going to do when we get home?"  
  
He groaned and sunk his head farther into the cushion, "Anything but a family vacation!"  
  
Amusement tugged at the corners of her mouth, but she refused to let him deter her from her serious train of thought. "That's not what I meant," she scolded him lightly. "I meant what do two people in our situation do?"  
  
"I don't think there have ever been two people in quite the same situation as us, Syd. We'll just have to do what we always did: make up the rules as we go."  
  
She seemed satisfied with his response and launched her next concern on him, "Do you think the CIA would take me back?"  
  
"You can't possibly be thinking of--"  
  
"Going back to work for the government," she finished for him. "Yes. There's someone out there with a Rambaldi manuscript, and it's my fault--"  
  
"Our fault."  
  
"My fault," she reiterated as if he hadn't interrupted her. "I want to put things to rights."  
  
He shook his head, recognizing that unwavering resolve in her tone, "We'll discuss it later...But speaking of the CIA, I've been meaning to ask you, Sark said something about information they gave you about Rambaldi. What did they tell you?"  
  
She took her eyes off his for the first time, refocusing on the carpet-covered floor in front of her. "It was about a week before I left--you might remember they called me in for some sort of routine check, right? Wrong. They decided they had been correct with their first ideas about the Prophecy. I did hold the key to it."  
  
His brow knotted in confusion, "But we took you Mount Sebacio. I don't understand...What key? Sydney, where is the key?"  
  
"The key?" She whispered the words to draw his attention to her, expanding on the gravity of what she was going to say; he couldn't have done anything but follow her eyes as they trailed down to their daughter, tucked along the side of his body.   
  
"I keep it close to my heart."  
  
----Fin----  
  
  
A/N: I get reviews, therefore I am! Thanks so much for your support and occasional criticism, the response to this story was great. The thing is, I've been throwing around an idea for a sequel: Syd and Vaughn have their 2nd 1st date, Laramie gets kidnapped--again!--but not by who you think, and the perfect villain I don't think anyone has used before, plus a little Jack and Irina to get the whole Spyfamily involved. What do you think? I will do it based solely on the kind of response I get from you. 


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